03 October 2013 2:53 PM

What happened at Canterbury, Metric Reflections, Classic Cinema and When Not to Stand up for the National Anthem.

I hope to wrap up (or at least loosely wrap up) one or two continuing discussions here. On the Kent debate, I should remind readers of the 500-word limit on postings. Please keep to it. We very rarely waive it for a contribution of exceptional value, or for a person whose arguments have been attacked to reply at length. But in general it’s a good discipline.

One (pseudonymous) contributor said ‘From the perspective of any seasoned debater, your performance at UKC was atrocious. Evading of facts and constant accusations of ignoring your points at Professor Stevens really did highlight to us all how out of depth you were when confronted with a current academic on the subject of decriminalisation. You approached the audience at the start and asked us all to keep an open mind. While then proceeding to deny the numerous statistics and studies presented by Professor Stevens, not to challenge, simply to insist that they were false and to refer back to statistics you had from decades ago.’

**I reply : This is not my recollection of the event. As there were plenty of witnesses, I’d welcome any other accounts. But in the absence of these, my main disagreement with Professor Stevens was over his portrayal of regimes in this country and elsewhere as being in some way punitive. My whole point, (specifically in this country, though it is equally true elsewhere) is that Western countries have maintained formal legal bans on the possession of certain drugs, while informally abandoning them. They have further camouflaged this behaviour by pursuing noisy and well-publicised campaigns against traffickers, rendered entirely futile by their lack of action to interdict demand. I demonstrated this with statistics about the British response which Professor Stevens did not challenge.

Likewise I successfully (by the use of statistics) challenged his contention that this country’s introduction of a relaxed attitude towards heroin abuse had not been followed by a large increase in the numbers of abusers. We argued a bit about Sweden, which I brought in only as an example of a country which, uniquely in western Europe, had attempted (not, in my view, vigorously enough) to act against possession of cannabis. He attempted to show that the reduction in cannabis use had not been caused by this, since it began before the policy’s implementation. I disputed this logic. There are many factors in such reductions. It may well be that the Swedish policy accelerated a process already under way. I don’t think the possibility can be dismissed. The Swedish government certainly thought so, when it gave evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee some years ago.

My pseudonymous critic continues: ‘They didn't count the votes at the end because it seemed slightly tragic to do so.’

***To which I reply, not to me (has he asked the Chairman if this was his reason?) . I thought the position had quite possibly shifted a bit towards me, though not as much as I might have hoped. Given the overwhelming preponderance against me from the start, that wouldn’t be a surprise’

He goes on ‘You had lost so overwhelmingly to a room of people who were left not feeling as though they hadn’t learnt anything but had sat in a room for two hours while you led scathing attacks on anyone you deemed to be a ‘pothead’ or ‘doper’. Or God forbid, those who suffer from depression or addiction. At which point, you not only lost the interest of the room but the last modicums of respect from anyone in the audience who came with a truly open mind.’

***To which I reply that this is no doubt his opinion and that of several others, but not that of quite a few individuals who spoke to me afterwards. It may not, therefore, be an incontestable fact. I don’t actually recall using the words ‘pothead’ or ‘doper’ (only referring to the fictional multinational ‘DopeCo’, which I posited as the putative name of the giant corporation which will arise once the legalisers get their way).

He goes on ‘And since you were so keen last night to convince everyone in the room of the falsity that is the medical research benefits of illegal substances, particularly cannabis’,

***Actually the subject hardly came up. Though I pointed out that the principal ingredient of cannabis is now available on special prescription on the NHS (which it is) and I dismissed the idea that any medicine could be prescribed except in closely-measured and regulated quantities; and also said that if people seriously wanted to see THC used as a medicine, then they would obviously separate themselves from any campaign to have it licensed as a permitted pleasure drug. If medical cannabis is so urgently needed, then surely the narrower the campaign, the more likely it is to succeed. And yet, in so many of these debates, I find alleged campaigners for ‘medical’ cannabis, sitting alongside, and supporting, campaigners for what I might politely call ‘non-medical cannabis’. This defies all logic, if this is a genuine campaign to relieve human suffering.

And I also said that drugs might often have apparently beneficial effects but were unusable because of their other impacts (such as Thalidomide, which when first prescribed was a highly effective treatment of morning sickness in pregnant women, but whose ‘side-effects’ were notoriously appalling).

He says : ‘I thought I’d leave a link so you may perhaps update some of your facts and gain a more well-informed opinion. [LINK REMOVED BY MODERATOR] The Centre for Medicinal Cannabis Research, University of California. Here you can see a number of scientific publications and reports which discuss Cannabis’ use for a number of conditions and their symptoms; including MS, HIV and Cancer and the on-going research into its medicinal potential.’

No doubt you can. And here you can see a link to my discussion of Keith Stroup’s statement that legalisers would use medical marijuana as a red herring to get pot a good name http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/stroup-keith/ . There is also a long passage on the Stroup affair in my book ‘The War we Never Fought’.

On the Metric system, I know perfectly well that it is legally permissible in this country, and am perfectly happy for anybody who wishes to use it, to use it. I just don't wish to have it imposed on me, either by law or by the use of immensely powerful cultural forces such as the BBC. In these days of near-universal access to enormously powerful calculating engines, incredibly accurate conversions between the two systems are available to anyone who needs them, making it easier than ever for them to co-exist. What irks me is the insistent effort to supersede customary measures, by schools, broadcasters, publishers, map-makers and others, by refusing to mention or refer to them.

As has been pointed out here, these measures are human in scale, polished in use like old iron, derive from centuries of use and custom, have English names which resonate in poetry, proverb, scripture and literature, and are much-liked by many. They continue in use long after schools ceased to teach them, in such things as the weights of babies, and our own self-descriptions, in terms of height and weight. This is because they conjure up mental pictures which metric measurements do not, and are part of the actual, spoken, living language of these islands. BBC reporters often make comical errors with metric masurements (I have sometimes mentioned the wondrous invention, by a BBC Radio 4 nature programme, of some '2,000 metre high' cliffs in the Falkland Islands. Of course, they are 600 feet high. And, had the scripts said '6,000 feet' , I suspect someone would have said 'really?'. But the use of metres (based as they are on nothing more than a dud calculation made in a laboratory) brought no mental picture to mind.

Customary measures (more or less) survive here because we remain (more or less) free, and because we have not been invaded by a foreign power. The same, only more so, is true of the USA. In all but a very few cases, metric measurements have been imposed on the countries which have them, by revolutions, by colonial ‘liberations’ or by conquerors. In the few exceptions, the Anglosphere Commonwealth countries of Canada, Australia and New Zealand (and the secessionist ex-Commonwealth country of South Africa) they were adopted as a (now rather ironic) declaration of difference from the former home country and Imperial power, or (in the case of Canada) as a gesture of independence from the USA.

I challenge my metrifying critics to tell me at what stage, and by what process, our supposedly sovereign Parliament ever removed customary measures from normal use, and mandated the substitution of metric ones. Permission is one thing. Imposition is another.

Metric measures represent an idealistic, top-down, civil-law approach to society, as opposed to the pragmatic, common-law tradition of the English-speaking peoples. Thai is one fothe reasons why this quarrel has a sigbnificance much larger than some prosaic persons seem to think, and why Steve Thoburn was prepared to risk prosecution rather than abandon thje customary measures he and his customers preferred.

The BBC has no mandate from any place to decide that it must exclusively use or promote metric measures. As long as it is financed by a legally-enforced poll-tax, for non-payment of which we can go to prison, it has to serve the whole people, not its own whim.

It is, alas, true, that our woeful education system now fails to teach either system properly ( I was lucky enough to be taught both, and my objection to the metric system does not arise from any difficulty in using it. I used it in the Soviet Union, when I lived there. It seemed very well-fitted to that centralised, utopian, regulated, top-down chilly state, and may have found easier acceptance because the old Imperial Verst was quite close to a kilometre in length. I’d be interested to know from those with good Russian what form measurements take in the fairy-tales, literature and poetry of the former era, or whether Soviet editors have inserted metric measures in the tale of Baba Yaga, or the prose of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Lermontov.

Those who use street markets may well have noticed the growing habit of selling fruit and other goods in 'bowls', by which what you see is what you get, because so many people now udnerstand neither system. Petrol likewise, is now commonly sold by the Pound Sterling rather than by litre or gallon.

I’ll stay away from formal politics at the moment, but I’m glad of the response to my mention of ‘Bicycle Thieves’ . If I have introduced even one person to this moving and thoughtful film, I’m delighted. It is one of the blessings of our times that old films (which few commercial cinemas would ever show) are now so widely available. Just as second-hand bookshops are, these days, often far more interesting than those selling newly-published works, old films have much more to say to us than most new ones.

This gives me the excuse to mention the old Scala Cinema (now reincarnated in another form) in what was then a rather scruffy part of Oxford, where I went to see many art-house movies of the kind you can only get on DVD these days. The thing it provided was an audience, often very engaged, which of course you can’t get when you watch films at home.

from the Oxford of the middle 1960s. I was living in the city then, then as now an Oxford Townie, and remember that one of my Trotskyist comrades, a Parsee from India who had a large moustache but otherwise had almost no resemblance to Tariq, was constantly being pulled in by the police who thought he was the great revolutionary. I have long been puzzled that these recollections attracted so little attention when the Guardian published them back in May.

Apart from the interesting note about Suze Rotolo (whose classically Marxist influence on Bob Dylan was evident to us revolutionaries in so many of his songs) , do please be sure to read the bit about what happened when Tariq stood up for the playing of the national Anthem - which I can still remember ending cinema performances as late as 1968, the last time I experienced it, at a showing of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’)

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John G, OK, I have no knowledge or experience of this issue in Australia and New Zealand whatsoever, so if you say linking metrication with separation there is a myth then I cannot counter that. I am surprised, though. There was lots of grassroots opposition to metrication in English Canada at the time, so I would have expected something similar there.

@Brooks Davis | 09 October 2013.
| "are you sure that it wasn't the politicians and/or bureaucrats in the governments| | | of Australia and New Zealand who were motivated by a personal desire to further |. | separate themselves from the mother country"

Metrication started in New Zealand in 1969, that's 44 years ago, so I can't say for certain, that politicians and/or bureaucrats in the government, were, or were not, motivated by a personal desire to further separate themselves from the mother country (the UK). However, although it's possible that some people may have privately held that view, it's not something that I remember as being a public view or opinion. Furthermore, metrication was seen as a positive process that would bring closer relations with our trading partners in SE Asia and Japan. To have made a public statement that the main reason, or one of the reasons for metrication, was .. "To further separate ourselves from the mother country (the UK)" ... would have put a negative slant on a process that was seen as positive or neutral by the majority of the population.

I think it is also relevant, to say that in the 1960s, and 1970s, the links between Australia /New Zealand and the UK, were not as strong as they had been in the 1940s and 1950s. The UK had fought beside the ANZACs in Korea, and the Malayan Emergency, but had decided not to enter the Vietnam war, which right or wrong both Australia and New Zealand had decided to engage in. Throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s both Australia and New Zealand we're establishing trading links within their own regions of SE Asia and the Pacific Rim. When the UK entered the EEC in 1973, the Australia/New Zealand trading links with the UK were further eroded as the UK traded within the EEC.
So separation was already occurring in 1969 as each country followed their own agenda.

It's difficult to reason, that metrication in Australia and New Zealand, would have caused or accelerated separation when by 1969 1970 the UK had already started moving towards metrication. As I have said, in the previous comment, I think linking metrication with separation is a myth.

No medical cannabis was not discussed in any great length but it was sniped at by Mr Hitchens who utilised his favourite quote about it being 'red herring' (a quote which I regret to tell you is denied by Keith Stroup). I imagine Professor Stevens didn't approach the subject because it wasn't relevant to the debate at all, something which Mr Hitchens failed to realise.

And I'm not going to fight you on what specific words he said. I know what I heard and what people discussed afterwards.

Were you unaware of this? Feels odd if you did any research, simply typing it into Google tells you it isn't true. Or is this again you displaying your keen ability to find evidence for your arguments even when it is completely false?

M. J. Henderson and John G, are you sure that it wasn't the politicians and/or bureaucrats in the governments of Australia and New Zealand who were motivated by a personal desire to further separate themselves from the mother country and used trade harmonization as a pretext to metricate? Peter Hitchens is not given to idle generalizations, although he, like any human, can be wrong sometimes (e.g. he must be wrong about the Canadian government's original intentions to metricate in 1971 because it expected that the U.S. would also metricate soon). I don't doubt that you are right that the public in Australia and New Zealand weren't demanding differentiation from Britain at the time on this issue, but we know that politicians in Canada and Britain at that time had agendas that were not perfectly in accord with general public sentiment, to say the least.

Mr Hitchens
I concur, with the comment written by M J Henderson 09 October 2013, but add, that not only was metric adoption in Australia, caused by the need to trade with SE Asia, and Pacific Rim countries, which used metric measures, but was influenced also, by the successful conversion to decimal currency, which had occurred about five years previous, to the start of the metrication program.

Australia changed to decimal currency in 1966. It was seen as easier and simpler than the old currency. It followed on, that when metrication started in 1970, it was also seen as easier and simpler. This was one of the main drivers of the move to metric measures in Australia.

Also, I was in New Zealand, when they changed to decimal currency in 1967, and when they started metrication in 1969. The main reasons for the change to metric measures, were similar to the reasons given in Australia. I can recall that metric measures were said to be important for trading links, especially with Japan and the main trading partner Australia. The successful change to decimal currency, in 1967 made the change to metric measures, more acceptable, when it started in 1969.
I never heard or read, in the media, any suggestion that the change was necessary, because of a "declaration of difference from the former home country and Imperial power". I am also puzzled by this remark which I can only say is a myth.

Dear Mr Hitchens,
I am an avid reader of your blog. I can inform you that Australia did not adopt metric in order to differentiate itself from Britain. While metric was legal in Australia from 1947 alongside imperial measurements, the impetus towards a metric only system of measurement came from a 1968 parliamentary review (this was when the government was held by the conservative, pro-British Liberal-National coalition, as it is now) which found that the metric system facilitated greater efficiency in making calculations, was found to be easier for school children to learn than imperial measurements and had been or was being adopted by a majority of our trading partners. There are all quite rational grounds for making such a decision, which had nothing to do with rejecting cultural ties with England. Wherever did you get such a strange notion from? Apart from a minority of Socialists, Irish migrants and professional malcontents, most Australians are quite happy to retain our cultural ties with Britain.

@ Brooks Davis
Thank you for your candid reply. Its just I had this thing for draft dodgers that only veterans can understand . Your Father sounds a grand chap. I hope he is still enjoying life as a vet himself.
By the by, Rambo was filmed quite close to where you describe. A definitive film in showing the disregard America had for these veterans. Must have gone down well .

mikebarnes, that's OK, I don't mind answering your question. Some Americans did flee north to Canada from the draft, but not my father. He was served honourably in the U.S. Air Force. He was stationed at a base in a small Washington State town on the Canadian border when he met my mother on a weekend spent in the much larger city of Vancouver that lies a little north of the border.

A question for Brooks Davis
You say your awaiting to get a dual nationality via the reason your father is / was American . The question may seem rude, but I assure you its not meant. As many crossed the border to avoid the draft. Was this the case with your father. I'd understand if no answer were forthcoming. But learning the histories of posters on this site is rewarding.

Elaine, you may be right about what will happen. However, those Tea Party Republicans were elected on a platform by their constituents to oppose what they are opposing, and, so long as they have enough votes, the Constitution is supposed to enable the House to defund what legislation they want.

"However, the American and Westminster systems of government are supposed to be adversarial."
Brooks Davis

Sorry to go on about a topic unrelated to this article, but I think it was over.

Yes, it's true that we want opposition but not like this. The Tea party caucus is just too uncompromising and that hasn't been a good thing. I really doubt if history will be kind to them. Holding up the budget over a completely separate issue (the Affordable Health Care Act) that has already been decided in 2010 when it became law, by the Supreme court, and by the reelection of Barack Obama, is completely unjustifiable and childish. Have you seen all the Republicans who have gone on record as saying this is the stupidest stunt ever? There's a lot.

Actually, I think they are so desperate to oppose it because they are afraid it might not be so bad. If they were really worried that it was going to be disastrous then at this point they would just let it happen and then say "I told you so" But how stupid they will look when it's not that bad. But history will just be repeating itself because their party opposed Social Security and Medicare as well.

Here's my prediction: the Republicans will lose seats in the House over this; either to moderate Republicans or to Democrats and then progress can finally be made with immigration reform and balancing the budget. And, I won't be surprised when they lose the next presidential election either.

My dad tells the story of being in Bristol in, I think, also about 1963. It seems that, there and then, it was still the done thing to stand for the national anthem at the end of a film. A friend of his refused to, so someone sitting in the row behind leaned over, tapped him on the shoulder, and punched him in the face.

Elaine, thanks – of course, it makes sense to me now that the old school tracks were essentially the same as the new ones because 440 yards equals 402 metres. So the “Miracle Mile” at the 1954 British Empire Games between Bannister and Landy was 4 x 440 yards = 1760 yards = 1 mile, and my favourite event was really the half-mile or 880 yard race! A 750 metre race sounds like the product of a pub dinner the night before a track meet. I wonder if there was ever a 1 km event ... never mind, I don't want to wonder that.

But another sad and instructive thing about the disappearance of the Mile Run is that I don't feel any nostalgia or sentiment for it because I never ran it, even though students before me at my school and across Canada must have been running it less than 10 years beforehand. When older people would talk about their 100 yard or 440 yard or 1 mile races back then I would immediately lose interest because I didn't relate to their distances and times on the track. And that meant that I, along with other youngsters in my generation, were effectively denied a history and a heritage that could be easily passed down by casual conversation from previous generations. This must be an illustration in miniature of what utopian revolutions do to nations.

I wish there were some “Teahadists” in Ottawa, Elaine! Yes, they are probably doomed: Obamacare will continue to deploy itself, they will compromise for the debt ceiling, and the Republican Party will likely pay a political cost at the midterm elections. However, the American and Westminster systems of government are supposed to be adversarial. They are dangerous to liberty when the putative adversaries are always gentlemanly, reasonable and agreeable, as so many decent, mature adults advocate. Out-of-control government spending and the spawning of centralized bureaucratic kaiju monsters are looming disasters that deserve widespread critical attention, at the very least.

Peter Hitchens, thanks for identifying that remarkable Corsican by his actual name instead of by his self-appointed title in your comment below.

For Information: Attempts to achieve compulsory Metrication in the United Kingdom have been made since the Nineteenth Century. See particularly the attempt made in 1871 (sic). The Parliamentary Bill for this year can be viewed via Google Book Search: "Public Bills"; Title - "Bill to establish the Metric System of Weights and Measures" (Bill 85 of that year).

Brooks Davis, thanks for explaining that. Now it makes sense. But that is why it seemed silly to me because on a 400 meter track (I think that's actually 440 yards) they had to run 3 laps and then 300 meters. And 750 meters is even more odd. But mostly I was just sad to see the old Mile Run disappear.
Congrats on your citizenship. I have dual as well so if there's if the Teahadists ever take over the government I might have to flee north. Just kidding, I predict their days are numbered.

Tariq Ali's reminiscences came as a great surprise, though I think his memory is a little faltering in certain respects. I don't think the Rolling Stones really became popular until 1964 when they released Not Fade Away, their first album was mostly covers of R&B standards, hardly danceable material. I suspect the standard music at most parties was still, The Beach Boys, The Four Seasons and The Shadows. Likewise, nobody was playing Mr Tambourine Man in 1963 which wasn't released until 1965 when Dylan famously went electric.

I have looked for subversion in Dylan's recordings of that time and, apart from the juvenile rants that everyone seems to go through, there's not much that appears to have been influenced by Ms Rotolo. Maybe Masters of War qualifies, but I think Hard Rain is his own response to the Cuban misslie crisis. The rest of Freewheeling is a typical Dylan mix of bitter-sweet irony and black humour. The next album, The Time's they are A'changing is, at least in the title track, is his most overtly political and it doesn't sit well with him and he's soon on safer ground with the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll - a tirade against injustice in a similar vein to his earlier Who Killed Davy Moore and the poignant Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather. After that he went in a different direction completely and has changed many times musically since then, in his private life he has gone from agnostic to being a born again Christian to returning to Judaism, where he stands now I'm none too sure.

John Vernau - I broadly agree with your assessment of the dangers of cannabis. One has to wonder, however, whether those who are drawn to cannabis (who, as you suggest, are the ones most at risk of developing mental illness as a result) would be deterred by any drug prohibition, however punitive.

It should also be borne in mind that maintaining the prohibition on such drugs is not without its dangers, viz. the illegal trade and the more potent products associated with it.

Thanks for your reply but in answer I would simply be repeating myself. In brief; metric is fine in mathematics and science while imperial is better suited to counting sheep, slicing up cake and chopping wood. We did all these things before science was heard of and we still do them today. So horses for courses is the operative dictum. Metric for manipulating the number system and imperial for dividing the apple pie in equal measures.

Mr H, I entirely agree with your stance on drugs and vote with you. If anybody has had problems with drugs in the household then surely they would agree too.

I usually don't buy things with metric sizes alone because I don't have any knowledge of what it all means. In my boat once I had a radio request for help and their position was explained in metric. Obviously their rescue was so much delayed because I had no idea what they were talking about. Interestingly, I believe that Nautical miles and positioning is the perfect logical start to any distance subject because it expresses everything in terms of time, sun overhead and your co-ordinates. No, I am not being facetious; you being much better than me on history will remember the train timetables were once based on it. I live at 6deg west and my sister in law lives at 2 deg east therefore the 8 degrees difference at 4 minutes a degree means that my sunset is 32 degrees after hers (and vice versa). This is good for sorting out the Berlin Time issue. My distance from her is therefore about 360 nautical miles. Its all so easy to calculate in the head. How could anybody think that the Kilometre is anything but a huge mistake made by somebody in measuring the Earth girth.

Elaine, I was on my high school track team in British Columbia in the 1980s, and I never saw a mile or a 1600 m race – it was always the 1500 m. (My best event was the 800 m.) I never thought to wonder about that until your post. According to iaaf.org, the reason for that silly distance is the existence of 500 m tracks on Continental Europe. (For you Europeans, 1500 m seems silly because all tracks that I am aware of here in Canada are 400 metres or 400 yards long.) If it weren't for the French-founded Olympic Games and the imposition of metrication by a globalist government in the 1970s, Canadians would still be running distances based on Imperial units, as I know we were doing at the 1954 British Empire Games. Now I am even more annoyed with the metric system!

By the way, I should be a fellow American by the end of this year. I made a claim of U.S. Citizenship on the basis of my parentage, which would make me a dual citizen of Canada and the USA. I'm excited, and I'm going to have a lot more questions for my father!

On the topic of metrication, the decimal system and the advantages of standardisation of weights and measures were set out in a letter of 14 November 1783 to Richard Kirwan from James Watt. So metrication was invented here and the normally excellent argument that it's French can't be used.

May I recommend an excellent dissertation on the subject: "The Working Man's Pint: An Investigation of the Implementation of the Metric System in Britain 1851-1979". It's available online and worth reading.

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